ACC Football

Despite appearing in four games for the Clemson Tigers last season before leaving the program, quarterback Kelly Bryant will not receive a championship ring.

According to ESPN's Chris Low, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney explained the reasoning Wednesday: "He wasn't on the team. You've gotta be on the team to get a ring. I love Kelly and appreciate what he did for us, but he decided to move on."

Bryant left Clemson when true freshman Trevor Lawrence took over as the starting quarterback, and the Tigers went on to win the national championship with a 44-16 victory over Alabama.

Bryant transferred to Missouri as a graduate transfer, and he is set to start in 2019.

In four games at Clemson last season, Bryant completed 66.7 percent of his passes for 461 yards, two touchdowns and one interception while rushing for 130 yards and two scores.

Although Bryant went 16-2 as a starter, led the Tigers to a College Football Playoff berth in 2017 and won a national title in 2016 as Deshaun Watson's backup, he didn't leave the school on great terms. After getting demoted, he called it a "slap in the face."

In hindsight, it's tough to argue with Swinney's decision, as Lawrence led Clemson to an undefeated record and enters 2019 as one of the top Heisman Trophy candidates.

Swinney said he hasn't spoken to Bryant since he left the program but added: "Hopefully we'll be able to visit and sit down and have a good conversation, but he's focused on what he's trying to do, and we wish him the best. He's a graduate of Clemson and always will be and was a heck of a player for us, but my job is to do what's best for the team."

Professional sports teams typically give players who are traded or released during a championship season a ring for their contributions, and while following that custom may have started the healing process between Clemson and Bryant a bit more quickly, both sides are looking ahead.

Clemson is focused on winning its third national title in four years, while Bryant is looking to replace Drew Lock at Missouri and help Mizzou win double-digit games for the first time since 2014.

Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney said Wednesday he doesn't believe the SEC schedule faced by the Alabama Crimson Tide played a role in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.

The Tigers crushed the Tide 44-16 to win their second national title in the past three years. Swinney told ESPN's Chris Low he has a lot of respect for the SEC, but pointed to Bama's large average margin of victory as a reason fatigue shouldn't be considered a factor:

"Listen, the SEC is a great conference, but I don't think they've been as deep the last few years. I think they've had two or three really good teams and then it's kind of been hit or miss from there. It's an awesome league, for sure, and I know people say that Alabama was tired because they went through the grind and had to play all these teams. Well, they won by an average of 33.1 points per game [going into the playoff], so they ought to be well rested.

"My thing on that is, 'Are you serious? They're tired?' Then you look at Clemson, and we won 12 games by 20-plus. Who really challenged Alabama in the SEC? They didn't get challenged by anybody until the Georgia game [in the SEC championship]."

Alabama wasn't seriously challenged for a vast majority of the season. It didn't win a single-score game until a 35-28 victory over the Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC title game. Then the Tide beat the Oklahoma Sooners by 11 in the CFP semifinals before the blowout loss to Clemson.

Bama head coach Nick Saban didn't blame the schedule after the championship game, however, instead accepting blame for not being adequately prepared for the matchups.

"I have a feeling I didn't do a very good job for our team...never got comfortable with what we needed to do on defense," he told reporters after the Jan. 7 game. "Our secondary vs. their receivers. It was bothering me going into the game and as it unfolded, those matchups were a big difference."

Clemson and Alabama could be on a CFP collision course this season, so the differences between life in the SEC and ACC may move to the forefront of the conversation again.

Former Florida State quarterback Deondre Francois is now a member of Division I-FCS Hampton University, according to Dave Johnson of the Daily Press. 

Per Johnson, the ex-Seminole has two years of eligibility remaining.

"It's a blessing to be here," Francois said Friday. "Coming to a smaller school like this, it gives me a chance to focus.

"I was in the spotlight at Florida State, but coming to Hampton, it gives me the opportunity to be in a more family-oriented program. In a smaller atmosphere, I can focus on my schoolwork and stay out of trouble."

FSU dismissed Francois from the team in Feb. 2019, with head coach Willie Taggart offering the following statement:

#FSU QB Deondre Francois is no longer with the program according to a statement from Willie Taggart. pic.twitter.com/WIdAMcm0zd

— Matt Murschel (@osmattmurschel) February 3, 2019

While an exact reason was never provided, the dismissal came after video was released by a woman who said that Francois abused her.

Per Chaunte'l Powell of the Orlando Sentinel, "a woman who identified herself as Francois' girlfriend posted video on Instagram that appeared to capture Francois getting into a physical altercation with her. In the video, a woman shouts for the man to stop hitting her in the face and the man refuses."

An accompanying message from the woman said that she "had been in a domestic situation with [Francois] and that she "lost my first child because of all of the beating and I suffer from post Partum depression."

Per Powell, the paper "has not been able to confirm the video included Francois and was posted by his girlfriend" and the post has been deleted from social media.

Safid Deen of the Orlando Sentinel also reported that the Tallahassee Police Department investigated Francois after a domestic dispute with his girlfriend in January 2018 but decided not to charge him with a crime. Per ESPN.com, Police also stormed his apartment in April 2018 on tips that the signal-caller was selling marijuana. Officers found less than one ounce, and Francois was given a diversion program.

Francois completed 57.3 percent of his passes for 15 touchdowns and 12 interceptions last season. He returned to action after suffering a torn patellar tendon in the opening game of the 2017 campaign.

Per 247Sports, Francois was ranked as the 66th overall prospect in the class of 2015.

After some were apparently upset that Clemson didn't bring quarterback Trevor Lawrence to ACC Media Day, the team instead let offensive guard John Simpson impersonate the Heisman Trophy contender:

John "Trevor Lawrence" Simpson has arrived at ACC Media Day. Amazing. pic.twitter.com/yWHsUplqtn

— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) July 17, 2019

"I tried to give my best Trevor Lawrence impression," Simpson said Wednesday, per David Hale of ESPN. "But he doesn't really say or do much, so it's not easy."

The wig was apparently the idea of head coach Dabo Swinney, who received blowback from the media for not bringing Lawrence to the conference's kickoff event.

Although they still couldn't ask questions to one of the biggest stars in college football, they were at least able to see a replica of the quarterback's hair.

Lawrence also seemed to enjoy the impersonation:

😂😂😂😂LOVE IT. https://t.co/mvuwbRtvco

— Trevor Lawrence (@Trevorlawrencee) July 17, 2019

Swinney did explain that he didn't want to bring any underclassmen to the event, and Simpson is set to graduate at the end of next year. 

James Blackman is penciled in as Florida State's starting quarterback over transfer Alex Hornibrook with the 2019 season approaching. 

Per Wayne McGahee III of the Tallahassee Democrat, FSU head coach Willie Taggart said Wednesday at the ACC Kickoff that Blackman is the "starting quarterback."

Even so, Taggart added that Hornibrook will have an opportunity to compete for the starting job before the season commences: "[Blackman] started in the spring and the understanding is that he's going to go in there with the ones. But those guys are going to compete. They're going to get their reps and the best man is going to win the job."

Blackman has made 13 starts for the Seminoles over the past two seasons, while Hornibrook made 32 starts at Wisconsin before transferring.

After appearing in three games last season and making one start, Blackman is entering his redshirt sophomore campaign. He completed 64.7 percent of his passes for 510 yards, five touchdowns and one interception, including 421 yards and four scores in a start against NC State.

Blackman primarily served as the backup to Deondre Francois last season, but he made 12 starts as a freshman in 2017 when Francois missed nearly the whole season due to injury.

In 2017, Blackman completed 58.2 percent of his passes for 2,230 yards, 19 touchdowns and 11 picks.

Hornibrook is a redshirt senior with starting experience dating back to 2016. After a big year for the Badgers in 2017 that saw him complete 62.3 percent of his passes for 2,644 yards, 25 touchdowns and 15 interceptions, he struggled last season.

In nine games, Hornibrook completed 59.5 percent of his attempts for 1,532 yards, 13 touchdowns and 11 interceptions, and he was supplanted by Jack Coan as the starter.

While Hornibrook has an overall experience edge, Taggart believes Blackman has come a long way since last season:

"He's ahead of what he was last year. You know, I think James, He's grown up. He's always been a great leader. But I think he's taken another step when it comes to leadership. He's working his tail off. I've seen him around office more than ever. And they're learning and going over football. ... I think last year was beneficial for him to be on the sideline and see it from a different angle."

Whoever begins 2019 as the starting quarterback will look to turn around a Seminoles team that has fallen on hard times. After winning 10 or more games in five straight seasons from 2012-2016, FSU went 7-6 in 2017 and just 5-7 last season.

In going 5-7, Florida State saw its 36-year bowl streak come to an end.

If the Seminoles are going to start a new streak in 2019, one of Blackman or Hornibrook has to step up and lead an offense that struggled mightily last season.

Texas A&M Aggies head football coach Jimbo Fisher downplayed talk of dysfunction during his time with the Florida State Seminoles leading up to his December 2017 departure.

In June, Bleacher Report's Matt Hayes reported on the problems before Fisher left FSU for A&M, including "academic deficiencies and recruiting failures" as well as a hands-off approach that left the program at "risk of not complying with NCAA standards and being ineligible to participate in championship events."

Fisher responded to the allegations during the 2019 SEC Media Days on Tuesday:

"In this business, you learn to have tough skin, you learn the circumstances of everything that happens and how it happens (but) that's part of this business. People are going to say and write things, and you know what goes on and you move on. I have nothing but respect for my time at Florida State. It is a phenomenal place and those players and kids and everyone that was there. I had a great time. We had great success. I wish them nothing but the best. You move on with your business and move on. They'll be successful I know, that's a great program."

Florida State athletic director David Coburn told Hayes most people don't understand the depths of the issues current 'Noles head coach Willie Taggart inherited, and those will always be taken into consideration when considering his job status.

"What's real is there absolutely were locker-room issues, and now, too, you can see the [academic] issues," Coburn told B/R. "Willie had a lot to deal with, beyond the field, when he got this job, and he's been busy dealing with it. That's [Taggart's] biggest culture change."

Fisher led the Seminoles to massive success across his first seven years. The run included no season with less than nine wins and was highlighted by a victory over the Auburn Tigers in the 2014 BCS Championship Game to complete an undefeated season (14-0).

Things started to fall apart quickly, however, as Florida State finished the 2017 campaign with a 6-6 regular-season record and Fisher hastily left for the Aggies.

Sources told Hayes the problems began with the "coddling of Jameis Winston," who led FSU to the 2013-14 national title before being selected first overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2015 NFL draft, and efforts to keep the program compliant were hindered by a "keep the players eligible" mandate.

Fisher didn't comment on specific allegations during Tuesday's media session.

Meanwhile, Taggart guided the Seminoles to a 5-7 record during his first year in charge, but it appears he'll be given ample time to get the program back on the right track both on the field and in the classroom.

Former Clemson running back Tyshon Dye died at the age of 25 on Friday after drowning in a lake at Richard B. Russell State Park in Elberton, Georgia.

According to Scott Keepfer and Haley Walter of the Greenville News, Elbert County coroner Chuck Almond said Dye was swimming in the lake with his two brothers during a family picnic, but he began to tire and was unable to make it back to shore.

Dye's body was recovered later in the day, and his death was ruled an accidental drowning.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney released the following statement regarding Dye's passing: "All of our hearts are just broken. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. I can honestly say Tyshon Dye is one of the sweetest souls I've ever been associated with or coached. We're just all heartbroken tonight, and we're praying for his family and know that he's been called home."

New York Giants running back Wayne Gallman, a former teammate of Dye, also commented:

I’ve never lost anyone really close.., in my circle. This one hurt real bad. Send prayers to Tyshon dyes family please. He was a special person that was loved by everyone. pic.twitter.com/d2DzqpHJzt

— Wayne Gallman II (@waynegallman) July 6, 2019

Dye spent three seasons at Clemson from 2014-2016 and served primarily in a reserve and special teams role. During his time with the Tigers, Dye rushed 76 times for 351 yards and five touchdowns. He also won a national title with Clemson at the conclusion of the 2016 season.

He transferred to East Carolina for his senior season after graduating from Clemson and registered 50 rushes for 217 yards with the Pirates in 2017.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The first losing season in four decades. An NCAA-record 36-year bowl streak snapped. The worst academic performance among Power Five conferences.     

It's no wonder that Florida State fans have been doing everything from signing petitions to creating Facebook pages to starting GoFundMe campaigns to taking to social media to call for coach Willie Taggart's head.

But want to know who's really to blame for this mess in Tallahassee?

Look no further than former coach Jimbo Fisher.

Fisher, of course, is the man who pushed the program to the very top of the college football mountain not so long ago. But, according to FSU officials and former assistant coaches and players, it's also his fingerprints that are all over the decline.

Not Taggart's. While most of the college football world might have had Taggart pegged for the dreaded hot seat after going 5-7 in his first season, those at FSU say he's one of the safest coaches around and will get every opportunity to lift the program from an abyss he didn't create.

"We were 5-6 in Jimbo's last season when [Fisher] pulled the ripcord," FSU athletic director Dave Coburn says, referring to a decision late in the 2017 season to reschedule a game against Louisiana-Monroe that had previously been canceled because of Hurricane Irma.

"If we didn't buy that hurricane makeup game, the bowl streak would've ended then."

That's just three years after Fisher had engineered an impressive 29-game winning streak that included a national championship and a spot in the first College Football Playoff.

"We were Clemson before Clemson," a former assistant to Fisher at FSU says. "We were the team that had caught Alabama and was getting ready to pass them.

"Then it all fell off the cliff."

Right into the lap of Taggart, the fresh-faced, 42-year-old former college quarterback who walked into similar scenarios at Western Kentucky, USF and Oregon before leaving the Ducks after one season for his dream job at FSU.

The dream quickly dissolved into a nightmare of a first season. There were academic deficiencies and recruiting failures. There was dysfunction on the field and in the locker room, within his coaching staff and in the classroom, soiling everything.

Not that Fisher will acknowledge his part in creating that situation. The now-Texas A&M coach told Bleacher Report in May: "I have no comment on that. I loved my time at FSU. We left the program in good shape, with good players."

Others around the program, however, tell a different story.

Many of the issues Taggart inherited, they say, began with the coddling of Jameis Winston, the player who led the Noles to such remarkable heights under Fisher. Those issues eventually bled into a hands-off attitude with academics and placed the program at risk of not complying with NCAA standards and being ineligible to participate in championship events.

Another former assistant under Fisher tells Bleacher Report that by the end of Fisher's reign, coaches were being given one mandate: "Keep the players eligible."

When asked if that was indeed the overriding academic plan, Coburn admits, "It appears that was the case."

Coburn, who worked as chief of staff for FSU president John Thrasher before Thrasher appointed him interim and then permanent athletic director, stops there. He wants to make one thing unequivocally clear: He and Thrasher, the man who ultimately would make any personnel decisions about the football program, are on the same page when it comes to any blame for the state of the team falling on Taggart—and Taggart's unshakable job security.

"I don't know how people can make an evaluation like that from the outside," Coburn continues. "They don't have a clue. It's almost not worth dignifying.

"What's real is there absolutely were locker room issues, and now, too, you can see the [academic] issues. Willie had a lot to deal with, beyond the field, when he got this job, and he's been busy dealing with it. That's [Taggart's] biggest culture change."

And what will it take to ultimately make that change?

Taggart says without hesitation: "Graduation and recruiting."

---

In early May, the NCAA released its annual Academic Progress Report (APR), and the FSU football team's score for the 2017-18 year was 922—last among Power Five programs and dangerously close to the line where the NCAA will take punitive action, beginning with a loss of practice hours and moving from there to ineligibility for championship events, loss of scholarships and eventually coaching suspensions.

That line is 930, but it's assessed against a four-year average, which spares FSU for now, if only barely, at 936.

The 2017-18 APR score falls under both Fisher and Taggart; the first half was when the team was coached by Fisher, the second by Taggart, who was hired in December 2017.

When the scores were released, Taggart took to Twitter to defend the program, tweeting and mentioning 24 players who finished "this semester" with academic success—and included their grade-point averages in the tweets.

Of all Taggart walked into at FSU, nothing was more disturbing than the idea of keeping players eligible. He was floored by the attitude toward academics when he arrived.

"Don't tell me [players] are not going to class. Are you s--tting me? They're going to class," Taggart says. "Who is he to tell you he's not going to class? That's accountability. That's discipline. If you're going to allow him to sit there and not go, of course he's not going. If we allow him to do that, shame on us. Then we really don't care. We're just here. We're just collecting the money and cheating the university."

Taggart says FSU had 29 players earn their personal-best GPA this semester, and the program had more than 25 players with a 3.0 GPA or better.

The obvious question: Where would FSU's APR be without the significant jump since Taggart's arrival?

"Don't even want to contemplate that," Coburn says. "The difference now is Willie isn't comfortable with just keeping players eligible. He not only wants them to succeed; he wants them to succeed at a high level academically. He's not just interested in them just graduating; he's interested in getting them graduated and employed—and that's a refreshing perspective."

Says FSU tailback Cam Akers: "I don't think [academics] are a problem now. I've always taken it seriously. So have a lot of other guys. Were other guys not in the past? Probably. But we're going to class, and we're competing as a team to build it back where it should be."

Academics under Fisher, one former FSU assistant coach says, were a direct result of a lack of discipline and direction on the team. Those issues soiled the locker room and fed entitlement—and it played out on the field.

That entitlement grew so significantly over the final three seasons under Fisher, it engulfed everything in its path.

"I've never seen a program go downhill so quickly after reaching the mountaintop," a former FSU assistant says. "Won it all [in 2013], then the worst thing that could've happened is going to the playoff the next year. The hardest job in this business is convincing kids who have been to the mountaintop that there's new, different gold up there—and it's worth the climb.

"Look, entitlement only gets that way if you allow it. You want to know why some kids thought they could do whatever they wanted? It was allowed."

For no one more so than Winston, whom three former assistants all named as the key figure in the program's collapse. (Winston's representation declined to provide him for comment on this story.) A Heisman Trophy winner, the foundation of FSU's 27 wins in 28 games in 2013 and 2014 and the eventual No. 1 overall NFL draft pick, Winston's FSU career was marked by off-field issues.

Among them was a rape allegation that was never criminally prosecuted but led to the university paying $950,000 to settle a Title IX lawsuit. And then an embarrassing citation for shoplifting crab legs. And then early in the second of Winston's two seasons played at FSU, he was suspended for one game by the university after making "offensive and vulgar" comments while standing on a table.

Winston actually dressed and showed up on the field for warm-ups for the game he was to be out, beginning to work through the team's typical routine. Fisher walked over to Winston and argued with his star quarterback about his presence on the field. Winston eventually left and came back in street clothes and his jersey to join the Seminoles on the sideline. After the game, Fisher explained away the incident with a ham-handed statement about "a miscommunication between us and the locker room."

That moment, one former FSU assistant coach says, was when the doors of entitlement swung wide open.

The cliff suddenly was within sight.

"Jameis walking out on the field, fully dressed, when he was suspended, after such a big deal was made about the suspension and his other problems? Come on," the former assistant says. "[Fisher] should've said one thing to Jameis: 'Get the f--k off the field. Now. Don't show your face in our facility for a week or two weeks.' And if [Winston] gets his feelings hurt and leaves, so be it. You've saved your team—instead of losing it down the road."

FSU beat Clemson with backup quarterback Sean Maguire and then won 10 straight with Winston and a team full of NFL talent. But the cracks were there. Despite the loaded team (FSU set an NFL draft record with 29 players selected from 2013 to '15), the Seminoles won five of those 10 games by a combined 18 points—before losing by 39 points to Oregon in the CFP national semifinal.

In his three seasons that followed, Fisher led FSU to 25 wins in 37 games, including a pedestrian 14-10 record in the ACC—a league he had dominated in his first five seasons, at 34-6.

"We had the better team in that playoff game," one former assistant coach says. "When I say better, I mean better across the board. There's no way we should've lost that game, and then to lose it like we did … that locker room after the game was almost exhaling. Like, this crazy ride is finally over."

Only it wasn't.

---

FSU began the 2017 season ranked in the Top Five and with a marquee opener against college football king Alabama.

The Noles were two years removed from their last season among the nation's elite and had clearly ceded the ACC to the league's new power, Clemson. In the two years since the loss to Oregon, FSU had won 20 games but lost to Clemson twice, was embarrassed by Group of Five team Houston (Peach Bowl) and lost to Louisville by 43 points.

The game against Alabama to begin 2017 was where FSU was supposed to make a stand with another talented team and a second-year quarterback (Deondre Francois) with NFL talent. Then late in the second half of a 24-7 loss, Francois tore the ACL in his left knee, and another critical issue to the fall of the program was exposed: debilitating misses in recruiting the most important position on the field.

For the remainder of the season, FSU was forced to use freshman James Blackman, a 6'2", 165-pound project who was nowhere near ready to play college football.

"What people don't understand is, I was never really coached to play the position before I got to FSU," Blackman says. "I used to search YouTube and watch other quarterbacks play the game and try to learn from it. It was a big step for me to even be at FSU. Jimbo did a great job helping me, sticking with me throughout the season so I didn't go out there and embarrass myself. I learned a lot from him about playing the position."

Fisher's coaching ability has never been in question. He's one of the game's elite and developed three quarterbacks (Christian Ponder, EJ Manuel, Winston) into first-round NFL draft picks.

But it's the recruiting misses at the position after Winston that still haunt the program. Since signing Winston, Fisher's unremarkable rundown of quarterbacks contributed significantly to the slide of the program:

• 2013, John Franklin III: Never played, transferred after two seasons and eventually switched positions. Now plays defensive back for the Chicago Bears.

• 2014, J.J. Cosentino: Career backup who left the program with one year of eligibility remaining.

• 2015, Deondre Francois: Two-year starter dismissed after the 2018 season because of allegations of domestic violence.

• 2015, DeAndre Johnson: Was dismissed before his freshman season began for striking a woman at a bar. Currently at Texas Southern.

• 2016, Malik Henry: Left the program during his freshman season. Now a walk-on at Nevada.

• 2017, Bailey Hockman: Redshirted as a freshman; transferred to NC State.

• 2017, Blackman: Started as a freshman, redshirted in 2018 and is FSU's projected starter for 2019.

Three quarterbacks Fisher recruited before Winston also never panned out: Clint Trickett (transferred), Jacob Coker (transferred, won a national title with Alabama) and Maguire. Ponder, Manuel and Trickett were recruited with Bobby Bowden as head coach.

FSU's quarterback depth chart this fall includes Blackman, Wisconsin transfer Alex Hornibrook and Louisville transfer Jordan Travis.

"Our problem was recruiting—the quarterback particularly," a former FSU assistant says. "That's where you live and die in this game. You get the right players, you win a lot of games. The problem is, we took too many chances on kids we probably shouldn't have signed.

"You have to dig deep into every player's background, and when you don't, you get problem guys or guys that have no business playing at this level."

---

After months of locker room issues last season and even, Taggart admits, dysfunction among the coaching staff, rock bottom arrived in the season finale against rival Florida.

FSU needed a win to salvage its bowl streak, and instead it all fell apart in the second half of a 41-14 loss that snapped a five-game winning streak over the Gators and gave the Noles their first losing season in more than four decades.

At one point in the fourth quarter, Florida safety Chauncey Gardner-Johnson lined up to defend the FSU offense and noticed the unit was a player short. He turned and motioned to the FSU sideline that the Seminoles were missing a player.

A receiver ran on the field, and then Francois threw incomplete into double coverage. A microcosm of the season.

Since that game, Taggart has overhauled his offensive staff, hiring Kendal Briles to run the Baylor offense and call plays. He says FSU now has staff harmony. Players responded in spring practice, and the buy-in that wasn't there in 2018 is now nearly 100 percent.

"There's a vibe now. It's coming. The walls are coming down. I see a football team that wants to right the ship," Taggart says. "You see it in the way they've responded to everything since the end of last season."

How bad, he is asked, did it get last season?

"Bad, man. Just that b---hing and moaning, about anything—because everything wasn't what it was before," Taggart says. "Why we gotta do this? Why we gotta do that? There's none of that now. And we tried to put them in situations this spring where they could've easily said that. We ran the s--t out of them, and no one said anything."

He stares out onto the field that Bobby Bowden built, where Taggart once watched games as a boy and where he dreamed of playing as a Florida high school star at Manatee High School in Bradenton. The field where Jimbo Fisher had a national championship team just five short seasons ago.

Taggart didn't visit FSU before agreeing to a deal in a room at the Atlanta airport. He didn't need to see the campus or the facilities, because he knew what he was walking into and knew how it got there. He's seen it before. It's the same type of nightmare he walked into at Western Kentucky, and the same damn thing at USF.

WKU had won two of 24 games prior to Taggart's arrival in 2010 and won two games in his first season before everything changed. USF had back-to-back losing seasons before Taggart arrived in 2013 and then won six games in his first two seasons before winning 19 in his final two seasons.

Oregon was coming off its worst record in 25 years when Taggart was hired in December 2016 and then won seven games in Taggart's first season—and likely would've won more but for an injury to star quarterback Justin Herbert.

All three situations, Taggart says, were similar to what he saw at FSU—on the field and in the locker room.  

"I saw it when [Francois] went down with an injury and the entire team was crushed," Taggart says. "I look for those red flags, those things that show you it's a problem on and off the field. I see other teams now, and I think, 'I guarantee this is what's going on there.'"

He pauses and thumps his knuckles on the big oak table in the big office that overlooks Doak Campbell Stadium.

"Then you see a team that's winning," he says, his voice rising. "They love each other. They care for each other. They're having fun. They create it.

"We're far from a finished product, but it's coming. And it's going to be a beautiful thing."

So don't blame Willie Taggart for how we got to this point.

He’s just getting started.

Donell Harris, a 247Sports 4-star defensive end, is opening his recruitment back up after decommitting from the University of Miami. He is also looking to reclassify from the class of 2021 to 2020.

Harris announced his decision via Twitter on Thursday:

9....✌🏾 pic.twitter.com/vVtU7gKRME

— Donell Harris Jr (@5stardonell) June 13, 2019

Harris had been a part of what 247Sports ranks as the No. 1 recruiting class of 2021. And while he has decommitted from the program, the Booker T. Washington (Miami, Florida) star is not ruling out the Hurricanes.

"I'm going to still consider Miami, but my dad just wanted me to open up my options and see what all these schools have to offer," Harris told Andrew Ivins of InsideTheU. "Right now I'm not fully a 2020—I got to take some classes—but I want to do that."

Thursday's announcement should not come as a major surprise, given that Harris revealed last week he will make a number of college visits this month. Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Florida State and Georgia were among the schools he was scheduled to meet with.

That came after he received an offer from Dabo Swinney and Co. in May.

It's easy to see why teams are lining up for the 6'4", 210-pound lineman (Warning: video contains profanity):

Star Defensive End Donell Harris is RECLASSIFYING to 2020 🤫 @5stardonell pic.twitter.com/id1Aj0Ol7C

— Overtime (@overtime) June 13, 2019

Harris initially committed to Miami in July 2018, when Mark Richt was still the coach of the Hurricanes. Now that Manny Diaz is in charge, Harris has decided to consider all of his options—and potentially move on to the next level a year early.

Terry Bowden has a new job in college football...sort of.

The former Auburn and Akron head coach will work on the staff at Clemson as an unpaid intern, according to Adam Rittenberg of ESPN. Bowden is seeking a graduate degree at the school for athletic leadership, and he will work as an assistant for the football team.

The 63-year-old has been an FBS head coach for 13 seasons, accumulating an 82-69-1 career record.

Bowden is perhaps best known for his time at Auburn from 1993-98, leading the team to a perfect 11-0 record in his first year and winning a national coach of the year award. He went into broadcasting after his time with the Tigers came to an end but returned to the sidelines for stints at North Alabama and Akron.

He spent seven years with the Zips, going just 35-52 before being fired after this past season.

Now as he approaches another life transition, he will use the opportunity to help out a team that has high expectations going into 2019. Clemson is not only the defending national champions, but the squad returns star quarterback Trevor Lawrence as well as plenty of other talent on both sides of the ball.

Adding someone with Bowden's experience to the staff, even in a minimal role, will likely only help the team. Considering he has zero salary, there is little risk.

Bowden also likely knows the program well with his brother Tommy Bowden serving as the squad's head coach for 10 years before Dabo Swinney took over in 2008.